BlackBerry to offer security solution for Android and iOS

TORONTO, March 14 (Reuters) - BlackBerry
said on Thursday it will offer a solution to separate and secure
work and personal data on mobile devices powered by Google Inc's
Android platform and Apple Inc's iOS operating
system.

The new offering, which will be available by the end of
June, will be managed through BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10,
the platform that allows BlackBerry's corporate and government
clients to manage devices using different operating systems on
their networks.

The move will encourage its large customers to continue to
use its services to manage devices on their networks, even as
employees seek to support their personal devices on corporate
networks, which could create security breaches.

BlackBerry is trying to regain ground in the
ultra-competitive smartphone market, where it has ceded a lot of
ground to rivals like Apple's iPhone, Samsung Electronics Co
Ltd's line of Galaxy devices and other devices
powered by the Android operating system.

In a make-or-break move to regain market share and return to
profit, BlackBerry introduced a new line of smartphones powered
by its BlackBerry 10 operating system, earlier this year. The
touch screen version, dubbed the Z10, is on sale in over 20
countries, while a device named the Q10 with a physical keyboard
is set to be launched in April.

BlackBerry is offering the Balance feature on its new
devices, which keeps corporate and personal data separate. The
feature allows information technology departments to manage the
corporate content on a device, while ensuring complete privacy
for users, and lets them store and use personal apps and content
on the device.

"With Secure Work Space for iOS and Android devices, we're
extending as many of these (Balance) features as possible to
other platforms," said David Smith, BlackBerry's head of mobile
enterprise computing, in a statement.

BlackBerry's move comes just as Samsung, whose line of
Galaxy devices have gained great popularity, attempts to make
itself a more viable option for enterprise customers with
security features such as Samsung Knox and SAFE, or Samsung for
Enterprise.

BlackBerry said its secure work space offering also allows
clients to save considerable effort and expense: They will not
need to configure and manage expensive virtual private network
(VPN) infrastructures that give the devices access to data and
applications that reside behind corporate firewalls.

"Secure work space also offers the same end-to-end
encryption for data in transit as we have offered on BlackBerry
for many years, so there is no need for a VPN," Peter Devenyi,
BlackBerry's head of enterprise software, said in an interview.